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Lilian Jackson Braun

I was all set to do a post on my knitting blog about the latest Lilian Jackson Braun book I've finished - The Cat Who Saw Stars - since it features an older Scottish gentleman in full regalia piping at the head of a parade that includes Qwilleran's oldest friend knitting a sock with four needles on the Friends of Wool float; and this coming Saturday is World Wide Knit in Public Day. But.

What's that you say? Never read a Cat Who... book? Well, I hadn't either, until I started writing my middle grade a few years ago. Every time I told someone there was a talking cat in it, they asked me if I'd read the Cat Who... books. So I finally picked up a couple at a second-hand bookstore. Well, Koko and Yum Yum are nothing like my Kedi - obviously those people had never read the books. If they had, they'd have been recommending them to me on their merits alone.

The Cat Who... series is part mystery, part social commentary, part ode to cats, part tribute to small town Northern America. There's a little bit of everything, in fact, and Qwilleran himself, the main journalist-crime solver-author-man about town is just the sort of well-rounded character you'd hope to meet someday. He'd sure treat you to a nice dinner out, at least.

Ah yes, the knitting. But first, Christopher Smart, the 18th Century poet. Qwilleran quotes a few fragments in The Cat Who Saw Stars, on the subject of cats in general, and of Smart's cat Jeoffry, from Jubilate Agno:

"For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.

For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.

For he is of the tribe of Tiger.

For the sound of a cat is in the most useful preposition κατ' ευχην.

For the pleasantry of a cat at pranks is in the language ten thousand times over.

For the purring of a Cat is his τρυζει."

If anyone knows what the Greek words are, please tell me!

As for knitting... I've gone back to work on a scallop-edged blanket, but I seem to have lost the pattern since I last worked on this project. That's okay; all my spare moments are taken up with editing. A Round of Words in 80 Days: The past few days I've been drafting like mad, finishing up scenes that were missing. For a fourth draft, I seem to have quite a lot of blanks remaining!

Sounds like you're plenty busy. Ya know, I have one of those books. Not sure which it is, but The Cat Who...and the picture of the cover jogged my memory. I should look for it and read it sometime. Where does one find time to read all the books in one's possession? And there's the matter that booklovers never stop buying. Oy!

Deniz: I just read your comment over at my 1st Author Interview. Thank you for your support!

And that got me here, thank goodness. You say Ms. Braun died at 97. That's when my own mother died, and with her genes I'm expecting to live that long. And I was going to post, soon, about Harry Bernstein who died at 101 and published his first memoir at 98! Lately I've been saying I'm too old to do all this--at 71. Reading about Bernstein and now Braun, I'm going to stop thinking this way!! Thanks for introducing me to her! I am now going to find some copies of her books--they'll probably turn up through Amazon's used book sellers. I can't stand to miss her. Wish I could read the Greek, but I can't!

And knitting: I took it up for a while when my first two girls were little and I had no time to read and write. Didn't last long. I often think about doing it when I'm watching a movie, but I don't seem to have time for that lately with book promotion, and trying to write. You know how it is: revising takes TIME.

I'm transferring to a WordPress blog, which is now up, I just have to get some content on it--but I'm not going to quit Blogger unless it crashes. A friend I hired to help me set it up got a thingy on my Blogger that directs traffic to it. If you click my signature here it'll take you there.

Enjoy knitting, and revising. I think revising is more fun than getting down that first draft.Ann Best, Memoir Author

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Today's question is: How do you find the time to write in your busy day?

The short answer is, I don't!

The long answer is, that when I'm drafting a new story, there's no question about finding time. Time just magically appears. I stay up late writing, and don't feel unrested. I scribble on napkins. I write notes to myself on my phone. I avoid social media because, hello!, there are characters to discover and exciting events happening. I hear conversations in my head while walking. Every image I see reminds me of the characters...

Then the story is done. It needs typing up, most of the time, from notebooks. That's okay, too. There's time in the morning if I get in to work early. There's time during the baby's nap. Slowly the crumpled already-typed pages pile up. Minor edits are done and missing scenes have been written.

And then there's a complete draft in Scrivener. Time to print and start editing!

have been very lucky this week. In between a very busy time at work
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I've read not just one or two, but four really good books.

I'm not sure if my mini-reviews do justice to the books I like to showcase. For a writer, I have a hard time describing why certain books touch me the way they do. It might be because, nine times out of ten, I'm very deliberate in choosing the books I read. Looking at the list at the bottom of this blog, it might not seem that way, but I do tend to lean towards certain authors, and don't willingly read many new or modern writers. Which is why I have a hard time with reviews -- I'd give five stars only to real classics, and so everything else I read is either brilliant, and I want to give it five stars, but I'm not yet sure if it's a classic, or it's good but didn't knock my socks off, and …

Before that, a quick ROW80 update from me -- we're nearing the end of this year's round 3, and in true ROW80 style, I'm revamping my goals for this current round and the next. No, I haven't finished edits at all. I'm hoping that after this year's NaNoWriMo, when the writing is in full swing once more, I'll have the motivation for edits.

Until then, I've suddenly got three new knitting projects! I'm not doing too badly with unfinished objects (UFOs!) -- I only have two at the moment. One will likely never get done, while the other is easy, and will hopefully fall into the knitting I'll be doing on the new projects. I expect all this to take up either my weekend reading time or my commute reading time. On the other hand, I'm actually starting to read regularly on the Kindle app on my phone, which means more reading time at night after baby falls asleep (in the same room) -- and yet this completel…

Weblog title from JRR Tolkien

"Melian - a Maia, who left Valinor and came to Middle-earth; afterwards the Queen of King Thingol in Doriath, about which she set a girdle of enchantment, the Girdle of Melian; mother of Luthien, and foremother of Elrond and Elros."

Blog Posts To Come

Mini-essay: Persuasion, A Tale of Two Cities, Britannia Mews and After London - 3 from 19th C, one that takes place in 19th C (written in the 1940s). All four have similar styles but oh! their methods of execution are so different! Easy to see how Austen and Dickens have stood the test of time

Campaign Challenge 2011

THE GIRDLE OF MELIAN

Author; historical romance Out of the Water out on queries! Now prepping contemporary paranormal romance for querying... Happy writing!

Word Counts

The Charm of Time: research and editing
Druid's Moon: editing final (?) draft
Larksong: editing first draft
Out of the Water: editing final tweaks
Captive of the Sea & Rome, Rhymes, and Risk: editing
Peter and Penelope: seeking a title... Need to type it!
Mystery at Bertram's Hotel: first draft
The Face of A Lion: editing nth draft